When it comes to building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) for the .NET environment, developers prefer to use the Visual Studio IDE. Up until now, Visual Studio was easier for pure Microsoft environments (such as for Silverlight client to .NET services), but Silverlight doesn’t have nearly the installed base that Flash has (99% of all Internet-enabled desktops).

With the release of SapphireSteel’s Amethyst, developers now have an easy way to create Flash-based applications right inside Visual Studio. The problem of linking Flash with .NET is solved by Midnight Coders’ WebORB which provides end-to-end client-server application development across the two platforms. The Midnight Coders and SapphireSteel Software technology partnership is aimed at implementing seamless integration of Amethyst with WebORB. This will give Visual Studio users a simple and elegant way of creating data-driven Flash Platform applications with a .NET ‘back end’.

Yesterday SapphirSteel Software has released the final version of Amethyst, the Flex development plugin for Microsoft Visual Studio.

For the first time, Visual Studio users have access to a full suite of integrated development tools for the Adobe Flash Platform,” says Huw Collingbourne, Director of Technology at SapphireSteel Software, “Amethyst gives Microsoft developers the ability to design, code and debug Flash and Flex applications without being forced to use an unfamiliar IDE.

“Moreover, Amethyst is a truly ‘visual’ system, not just an ActionScript editor. Developers can drag components from the Visual Studio Toolbox and drop them right into the Amethyst Designer in order to create sophisticated Flash-based user interfaces. In fact, Amethyst looks and works just like the C# and Visual Basic environments so there is really almost no learning curve for an experienced Visual Studio user coming to Amethyst.

“With Amethyst, Visual Studio programmers have a real alternative to Microsoft’s own tools for creating applications for the WPF/Silverlight platform. Amethyst users have immediate access to the Flash Platform for developing both desktop and browser based applications”

In addition to its visual Designer, Amethyst also has powerful editing features includes code folding , extensive ActionScript syntax coloring options and user-configurable code formatting. It provides fast IntelliSense and a superset of the refactoring capabilities provided as standard for C#. It also has a powerful ‘multi-process’ debugger which gives programmers the ability to debug multiple separately compiled programs (Flash SWFs) simultaneously.

Visual Designer

The Amethyst Designer supports Adobe’s Flex 3, Flex 4 and AIR frameworks. It integrates fully with the Visual Studio tools such as the Toolbox, the Layout toolbar, the Properties panel and the code editor so that users can easily create and edit Flash-based user interfaces inside Visual Studio.

IntelliSense

Amethyst supports all the standard IntelliSense features including code completion, snippets (code templates), navigation bars to find methods and classes in the current code file plus Go To Definition and Find All References to locate references to classes, variables and methods throughout an entire project.

Refactoring

Amethyst supplies a range of automatic refactoring options (to help restructure the user’s code) including: Rename, Auto-generate getter and setter methods (‘encapsulate field’), Extract code into a new method, Move a class to a new package, Promote local variable to parameter, Remove parameters and Reorder parameters. All suggested refactoring changes can be previewed prior to starting a refactoring operation.

Integration with Adobe Tools

Amethyst can import projects created by Flex Builder, Flash Builder or the Flash IDE (CS3, CS4, CS5), so that teams of developers can work on a shared codebase. When a project is shared with the Flash IDE, animators may use Flash’s timeline-based development while programmers have access to the advanced editing and debugging tools of Amethyst.

Debugging

The unique ‘Amethyst Cylon’ debugger supports simple breakpoints, conditional breakpoints and ‘break on hitcount’. It integrates with the Visual Studio debugging windows including the Watch windows, the Call Stack and the Immediate window. Programmers are able to evaluate expressions interactively in the Immediate window. The Amethyst Cylon debugger provides multi-process debugger including ‘listen and attach’ to enable the debugging of multiple compiled files (SWFs) simultaneously. When the debugger is in ‘listen’ mode it will auto-attach to one or more SWFs when they are loaded so that the programmer can debug by stepping out of one program into a different one in a single debugging session.

Note that you may male installations of Amethyst for VS2008 and VS2010 onto the same system (they coexist fine). It requires a commercial edition of Visual Studio as Microsoft does not permit 3rd party languages in the Express editions.

SapphireSteel has announced a few hours ago a brand new Flex / AIR plugin for Microsoft Visual Studio. The plugin will come out in two different version: Amethyst Personal (available next week) and Professional (available 2009).

Amethyst Personal is a free Flex/AIR IDE [1] which will provide a project management, editing, building and launching environment for Flex/AIR/ActionScript. This will be completely free and may optionally be installed into the free Visual Studio ‘shell’ edition.

Amethyst Professional will provide a drag+drop visual design environment for Flex and AIR. The visual designer will integrate with Visual Studio’s Toolbox, Property panels and code editor to provide a seamless design-and-code experience which will be familiar to C# and VB developers.

Amethyst Professional will also include full IntelliSense capabilities including code completion, code navigation and auto-expanding snippets. Amethyst Professional will provide IntelliSense both derived from pre-compiled libraries and ‘on-the-fly’ by analysing code as it is written. It will have a powerful integrated debugger to allow you to step through your code, drill-down and examine variables in a similar way to the debugger in other Visual Studio languages.

Developing with Adobe AIR and Microsoft SilverlightWeb Directions focusses on practical and inspiring concepts, technologies and
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I wrote some times ago a post titled Flex vs Microsoft Silverlight took some notes and trying to show advantages/disadvantages to use Flex or I'm playing around with Silverlight (while I use to work hard hard with Flex as you probably know) and I discovered that none mechanism to create and handle data binding exists at the moment.

As I wrote on the Chapter 1 of my upcoming book (sorry for the marketing activity ;)), Flex Solutions:Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and Flex 3 Developers, one of the
features of Flex that you use more during the development phase of an
application is data binding. For data
binding in Flex, we mean the process which binds an object to a component in
such a way that the latter becomes automatically added when the value to which
it is binded changes. In Flex there are
three methods to create a data binding:

Using the
curly braces syntax

With the <mx:Binding>
tag defined in the MXML code

Declaring
the BindingUtils method with Actionscript

The first beta of Microsoft Silverlight doesn't allow developers to have the support for data binding. Even JavaFX doesn't forget to support this important feature :Carrying that approach to data binding, JavaFX is supposed to enable
developers to create and configure components by automatically
synchronizing application data with GUI widgets. Sun also claims that
the language is far more scalable for the Java environment compared to
other scripting languages, as it is supposed to be able to handle very
large programs in Java. (via ComputerBusiness)

Microsoft Silverlight has been announced and you can find many posts and articles around the net about this technology.I was very interested about Silverlight and I tried to go deep to better understand what it offers and how it could differ from Flex 2.I would like to create a comparing table to

These are notes I wrote so far :

- Starting from the scratch : the Silverlight plugin has about 0% penetration at the moment. Flash player is everywhere- Silverlight seams to be very .Net dependent. Flex is totally independent to server side technology used- It does not offer J2EE integration and enterprise messaging. Flex offers Flex Data Services (now Livecycle Data Services)- No support for Linux browsers/systems. Flash Player runs on Win, Mac, Liunux, Sun Solaris- SOA( WebServices and XML) based services only. Flex has three RPC services : HTTP, SOA and Remote Object (with AMF3)- Low information about Silverlight Mobile. Flex is not mobile (so far) :))

Instead, what impressed me it's the video capabilities of Silverlight. At the moment this is the only feature that could compete with the Flash Player capabilities.

It leverages the VC-1 codec and it supports HD DVD and Blu-ray and the DRM features.

In the next days I'll feel more confident so I'll give you more detailed informations and comparing notes.

Microsoft is out with its proposal for hosted streaming service tat runs both on Windows and Mac :

Microsoft Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live is
a companion service for Silverlight that makes it easier for developers
and designers to deliver and scale rich media as part of their
Silverlight applications. The service offers web designers and
developers a free and convenient solution for hosting and streaming
cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences and rich interactive
applications that run on Windows™ and Mac.

The storage and delivery is free up to 4 GB,
with outbound streaming up to DVD quality (700 Kbps).

I saw the new Microsoft Home page only today, but I discovered that it was published on 14th December. This is a clear signal ;)Frankly speaking I found the new desing more usable and it makes easier to quickly search for different stuff on Microsoft site. But they removed the Flash content on the center for a simple image ;) I'd love to see some use of ajax or something like that for the search feature !

EngadgetMobile reported that Microsoft announced their Xbox Live concept and extends it to the PC, Windows Mobile and even Java-enabled phones. Whether you're at your PC or rocking a mobile, you'll be able to track your gamer tag, message friends, purchase content for that device or set it to download to another device, and of course compare rankings with your buddies on various gaming titles.